The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 3

The big day approaches, the day when our plumber comes back to connect the pipes, fit a shower mixer tap and turn the water on so we can wash our bodies again inside our own home. Whilst we prepare the bathroom walls for this epic moment we manage to find a few more jobs that are suited to this man's particular skills so this won't be his final visit here but it will move the bathroom adventure a little closer to an exciting conclusion.

The familiar white van draws up outside and boxes of tools and lengths of plastic pipe are carried into the house ready for use. The day is then enhanced by sawing and banging noises as a plywood floor is laid (a job for the apprentice) ready for the vinyl floor covering we have chosen, whilst beneath the floor, new pipes are connected, all of which will soon fill with water. Exciting stuff.

Then I get a call to assist with one rather heavy item, our new shower screen. This enormous piece of glass (10mm thick) has to be carried up the steep steps leading to our front door then manoeuvred inside and lifted into place. It is immensely heavy, far beyond what a doctor would prescribe for a human to carry, let alone walk up steps with. I shall not dwell on the anxiety associated with this whole process, the thoughts of what might happen should it slip through the fingers, of the crushing impact upon the toes followed by the shower of broken glass shards across the head and shoulders and possibly into my neck. This is the stuff of many YouTube 'fail' videos, in case you're interested.

When the day comes to an end we have a working shower in place. And we love it. The pale colours are ours. The tile pattern is our choice. It is neat and spacious, big enough to be comfortable in, given that the bathroom itself is a small room. It is just what we imagined. There are a couple of small modifications we'll make so the enormous glass screen is less frightening to walk near (pictures in due course) but we can use the shower. Phase three is complete.

There now comes a pause in the bathroom project schedule as we wait for the availability of a flooring fitter who has the right skills to give us a waterproof floor in the colour we want, which is red. We have decided it has to be red. This is the only colour that works for us with what we have chosen for the walls, so no compromise here. Perhaps we should have planned things a bit better timing-wise to avoid waiting for the floor to go in as this has to precede the final fitting of the toilet and sink but we're not unduly bothered. A bathroom is forever.

During this pause, however, another house project is starting not far away. It is the kitchen, another room we have form for making changes to in previous houses. There is much we find inconvenient about the present layout, the decor is dated beyond words but with a kitchen we must take it in stages since it is a working environment, needed each day, and there are no alternative places where we can cook our food.

[Well actually that isn't quite true. If push comes to shove we could cook in Martin, our campervan, or we could even use our single burner emergency stove, simple, but it would work.]

By now our ripping-out skills are of the highest order and we are keen to deploy these wherever they are needed. We have experience of the way the inside bits of the inner walls of our house are put together and this gives us the confidence to apply these skills to the built-in kitchen cupboard, another enclosed space that we feel we can do away with. It takes less than two days, a hammer, a small crowbar and some muscle to make the walls and the wooden door disappear completely from view. Only on the ceiling does the cupboard outline still remain but suddenly the kitchen has grown in size and we can plan the next phase, an electric cooker to replace the gas one which came with the house and is currently awkwardly positioned in one corner.

Of course, all good projects must start with a plan, so here it is, in 3D so we can better visualize where the different pieces will go. Just as our plumber departs we welcome first of all a gas fitter who is swiftly followed by an electrician whose banging and thumping noises assure us he is making holes in our walls through which his wires can safely run. In two successive days we go from gas to electric cooking and have the power sockets where we want them, ready for the kitchen we want to start to take shape. The gas cooker, far from old, is not wanted so we offer it up online, free to collect. There is no piped gas supply to anywhere local so there's no point in trying to get money for it. It's only useful if you have bottled gas.

All is going to plan inside the house so, given the absence of rain hammering on our windows I am motivated to attack the garden with a spade, removing large chunks of turf from a roughly circular patch of the sloping, mossy area some would refer to as a lawn. We're creating a garden pond and I soon discover that even though it is not actually raining, any hole dug in the garden fills with water very quickly and good waterproof footwear is required. We have a readymade climate-assisted natural shortcut to our pond creating efforts. Normally one would expect to have to line a garden pond with a water-retentive liner but given the amount of rain that regularly falls here and the sloping nature of the land beyond our garden, the pond might just retain water all year without needing anything else. Time will tell, of course, but one unexpected advantage is that we don't have to worry about getting the pond level. The water does this for us.

The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 2

There is absolutely no point in showing here a picture of the en-suite shower room which is now missing from our bedroom, obviously, because there is nothing to show any more! In fact all there is left is a pile of broken plasterboard pieces and a collection of nail studded timber pieces and I refuse to photograph these. The final part of this project was to relocate a power point, which is fed  from beneath the house, and this gave me the opportunity to correct a couple of other wiring issues too. Perhaps this is not the time to dwell on the confused state of our house's electrical wiring but if we move to the plumbing, this is interesting, to say the least. Our house has had at least one earlier central heating system and the pipes for this still lie beneath our floors, empty of water and gathering dust but causing confusion when it comes to trying to work out what is what. Rather more annoyingly, some of these redundant pipes still rise up through holes in the floorboards and have been chopped off just beneath our interior carpets. The pipe-less holes in the floor whistle when the wind blows hard outside, cold air rushing up into the house from below so plugging these holes when I come across them has become routine now. Gradually we are sealing up the house from the outside elements. We are also accumulating a considerable quantity of copper pipe as I remove more and more of the old redundant bits.

But I digress.

Returning to our (now missing) bathroom, we are accumulating materials, new wall cladding panels and tiles, ready to go full steam ahead as soon as our plumber returns. However there is a sequence that must be followed. The tiles that will surround our new, enlarged shower cannot by fitted until the shower tray is in. Wall panels must precede the toilet and sink fitting and we have temporarily removed the bathroom radiator ready for its replacement with a heated towel rail but deciding where this fits in the project timeline is less clear. 

Finally the big day arrives. A white van draws up outside and soon our plumber is carrying boxes into the house, assorted pieces of our new bathroom. The 'before' picture above is what confronted him although it hardly does justice to what is happening beyond the window where our first snow of the season is settling on the ground. The forecast is for cold weather, a good excuse to stay inside and move forward with the tiling which will surround our newly fitted shower tray.

But hold on. These are big tiles; more like great rectangular ceramic tea trays. Which begs the question... which way round do they go, horizontal or vertical? And how do we match up the joints - all in line or offset, like house bricks. Important decisions have to be made but eventually we make a start and soon discover that once the first few are done, larger tiles means quicker tiling. Who'd have thought it.

We have an intriguing mix of wall coverings to install in what is quite a small space but the end result will give us a bathroom which is uniquely ours, in contrast to the rest of the house which still reflects the previous owner's taste. As each wall disappears behind a new colour, one we have chosen to give us a smooth modern look, our vision becomes reality. When we have finished, the room will be ready for the return of our plumber, the man who will give us back a working bathroom.